9th street art exhibition

Running from this day in 1951 until 10 June, the historical art show that showcased the avant-garde portfolio of the movement collectively known as the New York School, organised by curator and gallerist Leo Castelli, was a landmark moment in of the post-war era and signalled an important resurgence for the visual arts and their ability to engage and enlighten in general. A veritable who’s who snapshot of the community, participants without deference or sonority in placement or listing (neither here or at the exhibit, most of the exhibitors though not all being professional artists and war veterans or those displaced by the fighting and were kindred) included Elaine and Wilem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Aaron Siskind, Milton Resnick, Helen Frankenthaler, Ad Reinhardt, Franz Kline, Robert Rauschenberg, Lee Krasner, Herbert Ferber, Joop Sanders, Philip Guston and Robert De Niro, Sr.

got a whole lot of money that’s ready to burn so set those stakes up higher

Sharing one of our nostalgic, impossible but transporting travel fantasies of visiting mid-century Las Vegas before it was sanitised into some contradictory, kidult theme park, we are quite enjoying pouring over the branding and logos from Regan Ray’s (see previously) recent addition of the city’s vintage casinos and resorts.
Some of the most venerable ones, like Caesar’s Palace, are still there of course and a few are preserved in indelible memory or ghost signage, like the Stardust (1958 – 2006) but there are some real gems to discover, like The Mint (1957 – 1989)—one-time sponsor of a big road-off race and infamous as the host for the first night of Hunter S. Thompson’s weekend trip as portrayed in his Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or Hotel El Rancho Vegas (1941 – 1960) with its Midnight Chuck Wagon restaurant and venue for big entertainers.

meck dec day

Drafted by the patriotic, separatist county Committee on Safety on this day in 1775 and adopted by the same organisation at the end of the month, the Mecklenburg Resolves, whilst falling short of an actual declaration of independence from Great Britain by the colony of North Carolina, the list of grievances did reject the authority of crown and parliament, and were transmogrified over the decades and romanticised as a break with England that preceded the United States’ declaration by over a year.
Though no longer celebrated as a state holiday (regrettably North Carolina also selected this anniversary in 1861 to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy) and not brought to light until republication forty-four years after the fact much to the consternation and scepticism Declaration of Independence author Thomas Jefferson whom by dint of similarity of language and tone might have been accused of plagiarism or cribbing—in fact accused of doing so by John Adams, the date is referenced on both the state flag and seal (see also here and here) not without some enduring controversy regarding the authenticity of the claim and tarnish on the Founding Father. The second date April 12 th 1776 refers to the Halifax Resolves of a neighbouring county whose historic legitimacy are better attested

theatrum orbis terrarium

First printed on this day in Antwerp in 1570, the collaboration “Theatre of the Orb of the World” from Abraham Ortelius and Gillis Hooftman van Eyckelberg is considered the progenitor of the modern atlas and informed charting, seafaring and to a large extent the Golden Age of Exploration—transforming worldview from older, staid conceptions.
The edition of some seventy uniform, bound maps with keys, legends and explanatory text with a section called a nomenclator that was a registry of place names from Antiquity as well as table of endonyms and exonyms. Though more immediate literacy accrued with this publication and plate tectonics and continental drift would not be articulated or scientifically accepted until l centuries later, it is believed that Ortelius, while compiling his work, was one of the first people to notice the correspondence of the landmasses and postulate that they might be mobile.

svetovni dan čebel

Born on this day in 1734 (†1773), professionally trained painter become beekeeper to the Viennese Hapsburg court, Anton Janša cultivated expert knowledge on their care and maintenance and published authoritative manuals and delivered lectures on apiculture across the Empire in order to maximise their yield of honey and wax and pollination of crops. In addition to the rotation of hives in pastures, Janša’s designs for bivouacs with stacked combs (see also) are the still the modern standard today, and since a bid to the United Nations from Slovenia was accepted in 2017, Janša’s birthday has been memorialised as World Bee Day.

pizza arbitrage or avoid the noid

First rejecting the characterisation of the whole house of cards of mail order schemes that pushes no cost merchandise in exchange for favourable reviews and nights on the town fuelled and funded via recommendations as too unsustainable to be believed and then learning of the seemingly contradictory exorbitant fees that food delivery aggregators charge to restaurants for membership, I was really taken aback by this bit of trading and markets incongruity that seems to be an example of business working for exposure.
Essentially the delivery service that a pizzeria proprietor uses undercuts the price paid per pizza taken from the order-in diner—the result being, experimentally verified, it being more profitable for the eatery to order their own pizzas and netting the difference. Of course, this mismatch and spreading out risk wouldn’t be sustainable with a network of restauranteurs capitalising on this sort of scheme but it’s the bubble and burst cycle that’s reflected in macroeconomics all the time—strange as it seems on this level. These platforms and the exploitative gig empire, a sheen of refinement, sophistication and technical skill but all held together with great effort and with the most precarious and vulnerable doing the most work, are subsidised by bigger platforms and by our own delusions of taking part and conceits of convenience.

bikini state

Established on this day in 1970 and in use until 2006 before being replaced by a more general and public terror alert status system, the eponymous indicator—which the Ministry of Defence says is a random and meaningless choice by a computer (see also)—was similar to counterparts in other countries though levels were determined by the threat to the institution and organisation itself rather than a generalised contingency plan.
Starting with Code White, the least serious and thus never invoked during the history of the BIKINI state, meaning no information available / “situation stable,” black meaning the possibility of an act with targets being undefined and alternately the potential for civil unrest with public safety questionable, Black Special, an increased likelihood of attack, Amber, a substantiated threat with a specific target or a transition to war, and Red signifying that the UK is at war with attacks imminent. The public became acquainted with the scheme through the 1984 apocalyptic war drama Threads.

6x6

why that’s a perfectly cromulent word: neologisms coined, defined and used in a sentence by a machine learning algorithm—via Things magazine

elrodon, son of halcyon: anti-depressant (see also) or Tolkien character—via Super Punch

your perfectly creased coordinated casuals: Kristen Wiig reads the early work of Suzanne Somers—via Nag on the Lake

specious logic: Trump argues against testing and tracing

howards end: E. M. Forster’s prescient 1909 sci-fi foray “The Machine Stops”

the floor is haunted: responsibly confined to our own living rooms, AI Weirdness (previously) imagines escape rooms